Compositions and methods for planarizing or polishing the surface of a substrate are well known in the art. Polishing compositions (also known as polishing slurries) typically contain an abrasive material in a liquid carrier and are applied to a surface by contacting the surface with a polishing pad saturated with the polishing composition. Typical abrasive materials include silicon dioxide, cerium oxide, aluminum oxide, zirconium oxide, and tin oxide. Polishing compositions are typically used in conjunction with polishing pads (e.g., a polishing cloth or disk). Instead of, or in addition to, being suspended in the polishing composition, the abrasive material may be incorporated into the polishing pad.
As a method for isolating elements of a semiconductor device, a great deal of attention is being directed towards a shallow trench isolation (STI) process where a silicon nitride layer is formed on a silicon substrate, shallow trenches are formed via etching or photolithography, and a dielectric layer (e.g., an oxide) is deposited to fill the trenches. Due to variation in the depth of trenches, or lines, formed in this manner, it is typically necessary to deposit an excess of dielectric material on top of the substrate to ensure complete filling of all trenches. The excess dielectric material is then typically removed by a chemical-mechanical planarization process to expose the silicon nitride layer. When the silicon nitride layer is exposed, the largest area of the substrate exposed to the chemical-mechanical polishing composition comprises silicon nitride, which must then be polished to achieve a highly planar and uniform surface.
Generally, past practice has been to emphasize selectivity for oxide polishing in preference to silicon nitride polishing. Thus, the silicon nitride layer has served as a stopping layer during the chemical-mechanical planarization process, as the overall polishing rate decreased upon exposure of the silicon nitride layer. Many current slurries provide moderate oxide rates and moderate selectivities, limiting their usefulness. For example, low to moderate polishing rates can limit throughput, while low to moderate oxide/nitride selectivities limit the usefulness of the current slurry technologies to larger structures with thicker silicon nitride coatings.
Recently, selectivity for oxide polishing in preference to polysilicon polishing has also been emphasized. For example, the addition of a series of BRIJ™ and polyethylene oxide surfactants, as well as PLURONIC™ L-64, an ethylene oxide-propylene oxide-ethylene oxide triblock copolymer with an HLB of 15, is purported to increase the polishing selectivity of oxide to polysilicon (see Lee et al., Effects of Nonionic Surfactants on Oxide-to-Polysilicon Selectivity during Chemical Mechanical Polishing, J. Electrochem. Soc., 149(8): G477-G481 (2002)). Also, U.S. Pat. No. 6,626,968 discloses that polishing selectivity of silicon oxide to polysilicon can be improved through the use of a polymer additive having hydrophilic and hydrophobic functional groups selected from polyvinylmethylether, polyethylene glycol, polyoxyethylene 23 lauryl ether, polypropanoic acid, polyacrylic acid, and polyether glycol bis(ether).
The STI substrate is typically polished using a conventional polishing medium and an abrasive-containing polishing composition. However, polishing STI substrates with conventional polishing media and abrasive-containing polishing compositions has been observed to result in overpolishing of the substrate surface or the formation of recesses in the STI features and other topographical defects such as microscratches on the substrate surface. This phenomenon of overpolishing and forming recesses in the STI features is referred to as dishing. Dishing is undesirable because dishing of substrate features may detrimentally affect device fabrication by causing failure of isolation of transistors and transistor components from one another, thereby resulting in short-circuits. Additionally, overpolishing of the substrate may also result in oxide loss and exposure of the underlying oxide to damage from polishing or chemical activity, which detrimentally affects device quality and performance.
Thus, there remains a need in the art for polishing compositions and methods that can provide desirable selectivity of silicon oxide, silicon nitride, and polysilicon and that have suitable removal rates, low defectivity, and suitable dishing performance.